Khovanov homology, open books, and tight contact structures

General geometric structures on low-dimensional manifolds (57M50) Symplectic and contact topology in high or arbitrary dimension (57R17) Floer homology (57R58)

Abstract: We define the reduced Khovanov homology of an open book (S,h), and we identify a distinguished "contact element" in this group which may be used to establish the tightness or non-fillability of contact structures compatible with (S,h). Our construction generalizes the relationship between the reduced Khovanov homology of a link and the Heegaard Floer homology of its branched double cover. As an application, we give combinatorial proofs of tightness for several contact structures which are not Stein-fillable. Lastly, we investigate a comultiplication structure on the reduced Khovanov homology of an open book which parallels the comultiplication on Heegaard Floer homology defined previously by the first author.

Review text

Let \(S\) be a compact surface with boundary and let \(\phi=D_{\gamma_1}^{\varepsilon_1}\cdots D_{\gamma_n}^{\varepsilon_n}\) be a composition of Dehn twists along homologically non-trivial closed curves \(\gamma_i\) in \(S\) where \(\varepsilon_j=\pm 1\) (not only the final diffeomorphism but its decomposition in Dehn twists are part of the data). Such data determine a \(3\)-manifold denoted \(M_{(S,\phi)}\) via the open book construction namely \(M_{(S,\phi)}=M\times [0,1]/ \sim \) where \((s,1)\sim (h(s),0)\) for \(s\in S\) and \((s,t)\sim (s,t')\) for all \(s\in\partial S\) and \(t,t'\in [0,1]\). A description of the manifold \(-M_{(S,\phi)}\) can be given by performing \(\varepsilon_i\) surgeries on \(-M_{(S,Id)}\) along the knot \(\gamma_j\times \{t_j\}\) for \(0=t_1<\cdots t_n=1\) (the notation of the product of Dehn twists in the paper under review corresponds to the standard notation via \(hg=g\circ h\)). Following [\textit{P. Ozsváth} and \textit{Z. Szabó}, ``On the Heegaard Floer homology of branched double-covers, Adv. Math. 194, No. 1, 1--33 (2005; Zbl 1076.57013)], one can associate to such a surgery diagram (and hence \(\phi\)) the complex \(C(S,\phi)=\bigoplus\limits_{i\in \{0,1\}^n}\widehat{CF}((S,\phi)_i)\), where \((S,\phi)_i\) is the manifold obtained from \(-M_{(S,Id)}\) by performing \(0\) or \(\infty\) surgeries on \(\gamma_j\times\{t_j\}\) according to the sign of \(\varepsilon_j\) and the value of \(i_j\). The differential of this complex was defined in [loc. cit.] and the homology of this complex is the Heegaard Floer homology of \(-M_{(S,\phi)}\) (\(\mathbb{Z}_2\) coefficients are considered through the paper under review). This complex is filtered by the homological grading. The differential on the first page of the associated spectral sequence is simply the Heegaard Floer differential on each component of the sum and thus \(E_1=\bigoplus\limits_{i\in\{0,1\}^n}\widehat{HF}((S,\phi)_i)\). The differential on \(E_1\) decomposes as the sum of the maps associated to the \(2\)-handle cobordisms corresponding to the edges of the hyper-cube \(\{0,1\}^n\). In the paper under review, the second page \(E_2\) is called the reduced Khovanov homology of \(\phi\) denoted \(\widetilde{Kh}(\phi)\). The analogy goes beyond the similarity of the construction of the complex as it is shown that the reduced Khovanov homology of the closure of a braid corresponds to the reduced Khovanov homology of a certain open-book decomposition of the branched double cover of this closure. \(\widetilde{Kh}(\phi)\) is not an invariant of the diffeomorphism of \(S\) underlying \(\phi\) and thus is not an invariant of the \(3\)-manifold \(-M_{(S,\phi)}\). It is however proved that it is invariant under stabilisation of the open-book. This suggests that one might still, in favourable cases, extract some information on the contact structure supported by the open book via Giroux correspondence from [\textit{E. Giroux}, ``Géométrie de contact: de la dimension trois vers les dimensions supérieures, in: T. T. Li (ed.) et al., Proceedings of the international congress of mathematicians, ICM 2002, Beijing, China, August 20--28, 2002. Vol. II: Invited lectures. Beijing: Higher Education Press. 405--414 (2002; Zbl 1015.53049)]. The authors pin down a particular element \(\psi\) in \(\widetilde{Kh}(\phi)\) as the image in \(E_2\) of the particular element corresponding to the generator of \(\Lambda^{2k+r-1}(H_1(\#^{2k+r-1}S^2\times S^1))\) after the identification \(\widehat{HF}(\#^{2k+r-1}S^2\times S^1)\simeq \Lambda^*(H_1(\#^{2k+r-1}S^2\times S^1))\) where \(r\) is the number of components of \(\partial S\), \(k\) is the genus of \(s\) and \(\#^{2k+r-1} S^2\times S^1\) is the manifold obtained by performing \(\infty\)-surgeries along \(\gamma_j\times\{t_j\}\) (which correspond to a particular vertex of the hyper-cube \(\{0,1\}^n\)). This element is preserved by positive stabilisation whereas negative stabilisation kills it. The paper investigates how this particular element relates to the contact element in Heegaard Floer homology from [\textit{P. Ozsváth} and \textit{Z. Szabó}, ``Heegaard Floer homology and contact structures, Duke Math. J. 129, No. 1, 39--61 (2005; Zbl 1083.57042)]. Even though the correspondence is not direct, the authors are able to prove that if the spectral sequence from \(\widetilde{Kh}(S,\phi)\) collapses at the second page then \(\phi(S,\phi)\not= 0\Rightarrow c(S,\phi)\not=0\). Thus in some favourable case this element detects tight contact structures. On the other end of the spectrum, the authors prove that if \(\widetilde{Kh}(S,\phi)\) is supported in non-positive grading then the vanishing of \(\psi(S,\phi)\) implies the vanishing of \(c(S,\phi)\). This is used to detect non-strongly symplectically fillable tight contact structures. This is illustrated on large classes of examples using the relation between \(\widetilde{Kh}(S,\phi)\) and \(\widetilde{Kh}(L)\) of some transverse link. In addition, the authors prove that when the curves \(\gamma_i\) are chosen appropriately, \(\widetilde{Kh}(S,\phi)\) and \(\psi(S,\phi)\) can be algorithmically computed using a computer program they provide.

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